“How much is that doggie — uh, iguana — in the window?” Tom Smith pondered that question many times making frequent visits to the Petco pet care center in Roanoke’s Towers Shopping Center.
“I visited every day on my lunch,” Smith said. “I would go every single day for almost a month and send pictures to my wife, Melissa. He just kind of stole my heart. Finally, I think it was a weekend, she and I went to see if he was still there, and he was. I almost dropped to my knees and begged, and she finally said, ‘All right.’”
With such an emotional and financial investment in their beloved pet iguana Echo, the Smiths were not about to give up easily when Echo — now 6 feet long after coming home in 2020 at 7 inches — developed a cancerous tumor called a sarcoma near his left eye. That eventually led them to the Virginia Tech’s Animal Cancer Care and Research Center …